GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
American Indian turquoise and silver along with U.S. military medals and campaign ribbons adorned the chest of Navajo code talker Teddy Draper as he talked in Punaluu yesterday about historic World War II exploits.

Navajo for broke

3 American Indian code talkers visit Oahu for a powwow and to meet their Japanese WWII counterparts

Samuel Tso and Teddy Draper grew up together on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. Keith Little grew up on the reservation in New Mexico but knew Draper because they competed against each other in basketball.

All three joined the Marines and became Navajo code talkers in World War II in the Pacific, where their radio transmissions were indecipherable to the Japanese. They were on Iwo Jima at the same time and played a role in the pivotal battle that ousted the Japanese forces from the island.

And even though they worked together later at the Intermountain Indian School in Utah, none of them was aware that the others also were former Marines who fought in the war, let alone were fellow code talkers. That is, until the United States released all the Navajo code talkers from their vows of silence after the end of the war.

Tso, 85, Draper, 84, and Little, 83, are on Oahu this week for the Code Talkers Peace Project. They are scheduled to meet Sunday with their counterparts from the Japanese Imperial Forces to make peace with their former enemies.

It is a homecoming of sorts for the trio. Little's 4th Marine Division used Camp Maui on the slopes of Haleakala as a base for its excursions to Kwajalein, the Marshall Islands, Saipan, Tinian and finally to Iwo Jima. Tso and Draper said they underwent advanced infantry training in Waimea on the Big Island at a place called Camp Chihuahua.

They are not sure whom they will be meeting Sunday because they are not aware of any Japanese servicemen who performed the same function as them. They all laughed when they speculated that their counterparts could be people who were assigned to crack their code.

"We didn't worry about that," Little said. "Maybe they were trying."

The Japanese were not able to decipher the radio messages transmitted by Navajo code talkers, who also had substitute words, letters and phrases that rendered their messages unintelligible to anyone who did not know the code.

Tso helped develop the code.

In 1968 the U.S. government declassified the code. In 2001, Congress presented Tso and the other 28 original Navajo code talkers who developed the code the Congressional Gold Medal. Draper, Little and everyone else who qualified as a Navajo code talker were presented the Congressional Silver Medal.

The Navajo code talkers will be honored at the 33rd Annual Inter-Tribal Powwow tomorrow at Thomas Square.